- It’s a big week for banning things deemed harmful to public health. The state of California has dropped a ban on using trans fats in the preparation of food and now the Navajo Nation Council in Albuquerque, N.M. has banned commercial tobacco in public places on the reservation. The new law includes outdoor venues like rodeos and fairs and prohibits both cigarettes and chewing tobacco. It does not ban tobacco used in ceremonies for religious or traditional purposes, but any ban on any type of tobacco product is a definite positive. Parts of the Navajo reservation reach into Arizona and Utah as well, with the total size of the reservation approximately the same as the state of West Virginia. For a long time, Indian reservations have been tagged with a reputation as a place with drugs, alcohol and tobacco abuse running rampant. It’s great to see at least one tribe taking steps to ensure that the menace of cigarettes, chewing tobacco and secondhand smoke are no longer terrorizing its people.
- Part of me wants to side with New York publisher Simon & Schuster Inc. The company is suing rappers Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown for failing to deliver finished manuscripts for books for which they received advances. I understand that when a publisher pays an advance to an author, they expect a finished book in return. On the other hand, look at who you’re dealing with: two ghetto, gangsta rappers who have both spent serious time in prison since inking their contracts. You make a deal with that kind of person, how do you not expect to get burned? And yes, I’m saying that Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown are bad people. You don’t go to prison for lying to police or violating probation by fighting with two manicurists because you’re a good person. So you make a book deal with each of these thugs and then you’re pissed when you get burned? Fine, but I could also say that you deserve what you got for being so dumb as to sign those contracts in the first place. No one forced Simon & Schuster to give Foxy Brown a $75,000 advance for an autobiography titled Broken Silence back in 2006. Likewise, no one made them fork over $40,000 to Lil’ Kim for a novel in 2003. Stop and consider the absurdity of that for a moment: giving a book deal to a thug gangsta rapper to write a novel. She can’t even write one song with remotely correct grammar but you think she can churn out an entire novel? Hard for Lil’ Kim to work on her novel when she’s being shipped off to prison in 2005 and equally difficult for Foxy Brown to do so when headed off to the hole in 2007. So I find fault with both parties here, but sadly the court is going to have to find in favor of one or the other in the end…..
- An odd new trend has developed in the NBA this offseason with free agents as they’re looking for new contracts. I’d always just assumed that if you’re good enough to play in the NBA, that’s where you’d want to be because it’s the best professional basketball league in the world. But if you believer the threats being made by some players, going to Europe to play in one of the leagues there is a viable option if they don’t get the deal they want here. Sasha Vujacic of the Los Angeles Lakers was the first to threaten to take his ball and leave, saying he’d go to Russia to play if the Lakers didn’t offer him a deal he liked. Next came Delonte West, a free agent who played with Seattle and Cleveland last season. West told the Cavaliers he was considering an offer from a European team if they didn’t meet his contract demands. The two sides are now sitting down to talk things out, but as of yet West hasn’t announced an official decision. The biggest name to threaten to flee the U.S. and become a Euro hooper came Monday when guard Ben Gordon said that if the team he has been playing for, the Chicago Bulls, didn’t offer him a fair new deal, he would be willing to go abroad. High schooler Brandon Jennings could be included in the group as well, although his circumstances are a bit different. Jennings graduated from high school last month and because the NBA now mandates that players be 19 before they enter the league, he had the option of going to college for a year, spending a year training or going abroad to play. He elected to sign a one-year deal with an Italian pro team, meaning he’ll be coming back for the 2009 NBA Draft. Overall, I’m not sure what to make of this trend. My inclination is to say that it’s a negotiating tactic, a threat these players are using to jack up their offers from NBA teams to a higher level. Of course, playing basketball and living in Greece or Italy doesn’t sound too bad, either…..
- You might be looking at the tens of billions of dollars the United States is wasting each month in Iraq and wondering exactly how you blow that much money in such a short amount of time. If you want those questions answered succinctly, go ahead and Google the Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility. What is this facility? Sounds like a jail, doesn’t it? Yes, it does sound like it should be a jail and theoretically, that’s what it started as. Back in 2004, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a construction contract to engineering firm Parsons to build the 1,800-inmate detention facility northeast of Baghdad. It was to be a quick project, beginning in May 2004 and finishing in November 2005. The awarding of the contract was actually the only successful part of the saga, with the Sunni insurgency and other political and security concerns waylaying the construction of the facility. From there, the project fell further and further behind schedule until; Parsons asked to push the completion date to 2008. The U.S. government finally pulled the plug on the project in 2008, leaving a facility that is unusable as a prison or much of anything else. Despite spending $40 million, this hunk of crap sits unoccupied and looks destined to remain that way. Because of it’s design, it cannot be used for housing and even turning it into a factory would be a huge ordeal. Meanwhile, the nearby Diyala prison is crammed with more than 600 inmates in a facility only intended to hold 250. So it’s success stories like this one that give all the evidence you need to figure out why and how we’ve wasted so much money in a place we never should have been to begin with….
- Good to know that our nation’s top legislative body is spending its time working on important matters. Y’know, things like apologizing for things they had nothing to do with, things that occurred nearly half a century ago in some cases and 140 years ago in other cases. Yes, I’m referring to the nonbinding resolution just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives officially apologizing to black people for the “injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow.” Jim Crow, of course, refers to Jim Crow laws that were popular throughout southern states as recently as 1965, The laws discriminated heavily against blacks and treated them unfairly as second-class citizens. Rep. Steve Cohen represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee and he sponsored this total waste of time. While it’s the first tiem the federal government has ever issued an official apology for slavery, it is a total joke. When every single freaking person who was ever subjected to the horrors of slavery is dead, an apology is unnecessary. When everyone who was responsible for instilling and maintaining the institution of slavery is also dead, apologies are even more unnecessary. Attaching the Jim Crow angle to it manages to salvage a bit of dignity here, but not much. Fact is, the people who were responsible for Jim Crow laws aren't involved in our government anymore either. The apology means nothing and it’s an empty, meaningless gesture by a Congress looking for a nice PR boost back in their home districts. While (nearly) all of us (ignorant white supremacists excluded) can agree that slavery and Jim Crow laws were bad, this stupid resolution wasted time, taxpayer dollars and an entire paragraph worth of typing for me. Next……
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